


our gardens were a pot

by bobbiewickham



Series: Barricade Day Ficlets [3]
Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:20:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23254603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobbiewickham/pseuds/bobbiewickham
Summary: Gibelotte, before and after the barricade. Written for Barricade Day 2018.
Relationships: Gibelotte/Jean "Jehan" Prouvaire
Series: Barricade Day Ficlets [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1677256
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	our gardens were a pot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PilferingApples](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PilferingApples/gifts).



Gibelotte had always wanted to go to Paris, from the first time she heard the word. Paris was where exciting things happened. Paris was where everyone wanted news from. Paris was where everyone went when they had nowhere else to go. After her parents died, that was Gibelotte, too. To Paris she went.

Once there she floated from situation to situation, working hard at each, never growing attached or setting down roots. She missed her parents. It was not a constant ache, but instead a sharp dagger-stab every so often when she least expected it. She drifted into the Corinthe like a stray cat, finding Matelote kind and Mère Hucheloup welcoming and Père Hucheloup fatherly, and deciding she may as well stay there for now. She didn’t think the Corinthe was a place where things would happen to her, where she would happen to things, where the world would split wide open so she could step in and claim it. 

The Corinthe was where she happened to Jehan Prouvaire, where he happened to her. She watched him out of the corner of her eye at first, scarcely daring to look at him. He was black-skinned and strangely dressed and dreamy-eyed, and he seemed to her like a prince from a fairytale, soft and just so in how he said things. When she first found the courage to speak to him, it was like entering a story. The colors grew brighter and the lines of the tables and the chairs more definite. 

“I liked your poems,” was what she said. He had just been reading them to a friend, his voice faltering, and she’d told herself he was shy too, and that had given her the strength she needed to speak.

His eyes widened, and he smiled, and asked her which she liked best.

“I liked both. But my favorite was the story about the great battle between the spirits, at the end of the world.” There had been two: the battle, and a gentler one about wildflowers, which had been beautiful as well. The battle had thrilled her, and made her shiver. 

“Ah, good” he said. “I’d feared that one would be less interesting, because my heart was less in it.”

“Really?” Gibelotte blurted out in surprise, and then she blushed.

He blushed, too, which made her feel less shy. “I like flowers. Especially wildflowers. But I also keep a pot of violets in my apartment.”

Later, there would be poems written specially for her, comparing her to the distant rumble of an approaching storm, and to the first fires of dawn.

Later still, their eyes would meet behind the barricade: all the farewell they would get, before everything started happening.

(After the barricade, she joined a group of women, working on a newspaper, and rescued the pot of violets, before anything could happen to it.)


End file.
